Go ask Alice

What's up with that gated 'community' in Montana?

Posted by Tom Philpott at 2:20 PM on 25 Oct 2007

Read more about: Alice Waters | placemaking

Alice Waters, long-time champion of food as a tool for building community, has done something quite un-Alice Water-like: sold her name to promote a high-dollar ~~gated development~~ "community" in Montana.

Over on Ethicurean, there's a great post by the novelist Charlotte McQuinn Freeman, who lives in Livingston, Montana -- near the site of the quote-unquote "Ameya Preserve," the kind of high-end, "green" gated "community" that makes my blood boil.

In my area of western North Carolina, gated communities often cheekily take the names of the farms they have replaced. Driving around, you'll see an elaborate sign above a rustic gate proclaiming so-and-so "Farm" -- and peer up the road to see "no trespassing" signs and McMansions tarted up to look like log cabins or farmhouses. "Farm" in this context signifies not farm but the end of farming. I guess in Montana, the word "preserve" serves the same function.

There's an argument that occasionally emerges on Gristmill that goes like this: If rich folks are going to lay claim to huge tracts of land, gate them off, and plunk down massive houses on them, shouldn't they be encouraged to do so greenly? I say, the hell with 'em. I have no time to congratulate major polluters for their marginal improvements.

At the Ameya Preserve, they're peddling "pre-designed" houses that range from 2900 to 4400 square feet as well as 10-15 acre "estate lots" that promise "utmost privacy, premier views, and convenient access to all community amenities.

Check out Charlotte's post to get the goods on Waters' involvement in this thing. Bonnie Powell of Ethicurean is trying to reach Waters for comment; stay tuned.

For me, Waters has always represented commitment to food as a way to build community: between farmers and urbanites, within families and social circles, within localities. Here, "sustainable" food is being used as a tool to move literally exclusive real estate.

Just as "farms" sprouting McMansions signal the end of farming, gated "communities" mark the evisceration of real community. I'd love to see Alice Waters, a genuine hero of the movement to create a just and sustainable food system, renounce this project.

For story: Go ask Alice
6 Comments | Post a Comment

What would you do if

they had offered you, say, a million dollars to do the same? That would be real easy to rationalize.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 2:36 PM on 25 Oct 2007

Gates and Walls

Haven't the rulers typically lived behind gated walls throughout history? We, the "ruled" are so often accused of "class warfare" or "class envy" but it is they who choose to live behind the walls which invite such characterizations. When the walls extend into the domain of the free then we have a real problem.

by justlou at 6:13 AM on 26 Oct 2007

Go Ask Alice

Read what Ameya Preserve developer, Wade Dokken, has to say about those of us who dare to question the validity of Ameya's promotional material. You can find it posted at the Gift Hub. http://www.gifthub.org/2007/08/class-envy-in-m.html

I wonder if Alice feels the same way?

by Pete at 7:38 AM on 26 Oct 2007

Very disappointing

"In my area of western North Carolina, gated communities often cheekily take the names of the farms they have replaced. Driving around, you'll see an elaborate sign above a rustic gate proclaiming so-and-so "Farm" -- and peer up the road to see "no trespassing" signs and McMansions tarted up to look like log cabins or farmhouses."

In my community as well, Tom.

by amc89 at 8:18 AM on 26 Oct 2007

Even more vexing

Prefab "communities" with idyllic names like "Maple Glen" or "Arbor Mists" that were kick started with a clearcut of the land and a year of mega-ton vehicles utterly destroying the soil. I always wonder at the character of a person who buys a home in a development with such an Orwellian naming scheme.

by PBrazelton at 9:15 AM on 26 Oct 2007
[ Parent ]

Livingston, MT

It is not far east of Bozeman on I-90; but also it is on the state highway 89, which goes generally south, along the Yellowstone River, to Gardner, the northern entrance of Yellowstone NP.

Around 20 years ago, I visited Montana for the first time, to attend a summer course on paleontology at Montana State University. The bus had already stopped in Billings, at around 3 AM, for our "breakfast break"; but Livingston was our first walk-around stop after the sun had risen. I thought I was in Paradise, so lovely and sweet-smelling was the air on that summer morning. A few days later, a friend from Bozeman drove me down 89 to Yellowstone, which is a spectacularly beautiful road.

But I hear the area has indeed become cluttered lately with too many folks from outside coming to build new places and move into them. Some of the most notorious are the members of Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant, who bought a ranch near Gardiner, and have constructed numerous bomb shelters in the vicinity, designed to survive a nuclear war. They are believed to have the largest privately owned bomb shelter in the US. They certainly did not exhibit much good-neighborliness toward the locals by allowing some of their stockpiled gasoline to leak:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Clare_Prophet

No doubt Alice Walker's new place is very nice, by some standards. But it does seem very unlike her, to be satisfied with a dwelling situation that will inevitably put a great deal of distance between herself and the people of the area. With what she spent, could she not have taken some of it and rented a rancher's unused house or cabin, and dedicated the rest to repairing houses on the nearby Crow Indian Reservation?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 9:52 AM on 26 Oct 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.